Spring Semester Manifesto

I WILL make good art

I WILL do good things

I WILL love good people

I WILL listen to good music

I WILL read good books

I WILL make good decisions

I WILL NOT dwell on the past or future

I WILL NOT dread the work I must do

I WILL NOT think bad thoughts

New Paltz Doesn't Recycle

I thought living on my own was going to be hard. I'd miss my family too much, and suddenly receiving all the responsibilities we shared, now to be carried out on my own, seemed like it would get very overwhelming. Feeding myself, being responsible for food inventory, cleaning up after myself (dishes, living room, bathroom, laundry soon), and making sure I'm on top of bills and tuition. But starting my third week it hasn't hit me too bad at all. I'm sure there will be tiring days where I'll fall behind and start to feel it all get to me, but I'm probably getting ahead of myself. It's nice only having myself to think of for a change, no rationing sodas and ice cream bars because someone else in the family might want. What's mine is mine, and though that also includes any mess I leave behind, it feels almost rewarding staying on top of everything without anyone reminding you to do so.

The title of this blog post comes from the fact that when asked about our apartment's deal with recycling, my roommate said she hasn't heard of such thing. Come to find out our complex actually does recycle, but the name is too unique to just throw out.

Quit honestly, the biggest challenge I've had to face is trying to be more outgoing and extroverted than I really am. But that's something I expected and it's one of the main reasons why I came out here in the first place. It was a bit surprising to me how friendly people here are. I've had many pleasant conversations with strangers as a person who's never had so many conversations with complete strangers. I was able to make some friends pretty quickly, yet I found myself trying to find people who looked like everybody I've known. Of course I couldn't find anyone, because all my friends and family at home are unique and incredible beings who would never be replicated or just replaced. And the same goes to all the people I've met here, everyone has been so incredible (so far), and I hope I make some lifelong connections. I have a good feeling about this place. 

Trying to get more involved, I decided to join the radio. My very first show is tomorrow, and my friend Ariana will be joining me for moral support. Feeling pretty nervous but mostly excited. Trying to keep expectations low, or just have no expectations at all so no matter what happens my feelings won't be too overexaggerated. It'll just be a music show with breaks because I am legally obligated to talk between songs (like actually). I'll put the link in the highlight's widget to the right for quick and easy access. The only thing I'm worried about is the speaking part, I have a sort of script created but I'll probably slip and stutter a bit. Even in social situations, I create guidelines for what I'd like to say to a person and once I've worked up the courage to speak, I fumble my lines and feel extraordinarily embarrassed. Whenever people ask me why I'm so quiet (which is very annoying by the way) I always shrug my shoulders even though I know the reason why. I'm too scared of messing up my lines and sounding like an idiot or making a stupid noise and having to sit with the awkwardness afterwards. I can tell when people think I'm not talking enough for their liking, but it's never really been enough to motivate me. I've tried to adopt a different, more head on mindset over here to try and overcome my quietness. My "chronic shyness" is what I like to call it. I will never understand society's contempt with people who are shy.

To further my on-campus involvement, I got a job working at the metal studio. My job is to sit in the supply room and check out tools students want to use. It's paid, which is always a plus, but I'm hoping that maybe I'll meet some cool people who make some cool stuff so I can swindle one of them into making me jewelry or something awesome like that. I think that would be nice.

Today is the 4th Saturday since I've been here, which is technically a month, but it never really feels like it. New Paltz is a beautiful town, but it still doesn't feel like I live here now. It just feels like I've been placed here, I'm just staying here for a while, and it doesn't feel like home. Because it really isn't, and I don't know if it ever will be. I don't really plan on permanently living somewhere outside the city. This is kind of just a small detour in my journey to find myself or something.

I think everything's just moving too slowly for me. I expected to do a million things by now and visit a million places and talked to a million people but I'm still right at the very beginning, but I don't want to be. Luckily, I am a very patient person, and I have the will to wait for everything. Not sure what other reflections I have for now, hopefully you guys hear from me again before the month is over.

Also: Happy birthday Talia!!!

On Saying Goodbye

My room as it stands in this moment

It's not the end of the world. But very rarely are you watching yourself abruptly entering a whole new part of your life. Not only saying goodbye (for now) to friends, but to routine and an entire way of living. And don't even get me started on the fact that I've never ever lived on my own before. Last year I would ditch class in favor of the Met. I would walk down Lexington Ave to buy a bagel and coffee, then make my way over to Central Park where I frequently walked past Joan Didion's bench so I could sit down and eat. I watched squirrels and I watched people, and I thought about my life for a bit until it was time to go home to eat the dinner my parents made me and do it all again the next day. Trying to get into a new routine will be uncomfortable. I already had to try it last year during my first year of college, the only difference was I had friends and family immediately there to keep some sort of familiarity. Can't say I don't have any friends here at all, but it definitely won't be the same. It's going to be very uncomfortable for me, but that's the reason why I decided to do any of this in the first place.

Sometimes I feel like I'm two steps behind everyone. Moving out isn't a rare thing. Going away to college isn't either, and I feel almost redundant writing about this as if it isn't something possible readers haven't already gone through. But of course I had to crash out and have my epiphany a year late, of course I discovered good music almost 2 years too late, and of course I didn't even really figure out my hair and clothes until eons after everybody else had a grasp on their own style. There are so many other aspects of my life in which I seem to be falling behind on but that's not something I want to get into right now.

I was able to say goodbye to friends before I left, all with the promise of seeing them soon. I did miss a few but I'm sure we'll make time for each other eventually. My door is always open. I told myself I wasn't going to cry, and I wasn't going to ever look back, but those things are easier said than done. Saying goodbye to my parents was even harder. Just as I've never been away from them for so long, they haven't been away from me. It would've been so easy to just change my mind and stay behind with what's comfortable, but as Madison Fraser wisely said:

"You can only grow so much standing in one place"

I really do think this will be good for me, or at least necessary in my evolution as a person. For my first night I have planted some seeds. I know nothing about gardening and already I'm thinking I made a mistake by planting snapdragon seeds to be kept in my room, but let's just see how it goes. Maybe by some sort of magical connection they will become a symbol of my own growth as a person or whatever. Maybe they'll die before I even make it to October. 

It felt wrong being home and doing nothing on my last day. The only reason I decided not to make any plans was because I figured I should spend some time with my family. But all my family went out or had to work so I was waiting for them at home until we went out and had some pizza. The waiting was a little harsh, the boredom really. It just left me with more time to think and to freak out and all that nasty stuff. I still had to pack but I didn't because I was just so tired of being scared (that ended up being a mistake, I'm sitting here now thinking of 10 things I wish I had), I ended up just laying around all day. 

But tomorrow I will wake up and make myself breakfast. I will walk down to Water Street and hand in my resume to a cafe and hope they at least consider me. Maybe after that I'll walk through campus, because as much as I want this "college life", I haven't really been at college at all. It won't be central park, and it won't be Joan Didion's bench, but I can sit down and watch squirrels, and watch people, and think about my life as a version of me who's already made it through this new phase. I don't know at all what I'm going to do, or how I'm going to feel. Usually, I have some sort of image or preset notion in my mind, but this time there's nothing. I'm really just going in blind and hoping for the best. Maybe this year will hit me like a fuckin truck. Or maybe everything will bloom along with my flower that I swear I will learn to take care of. All I did was put the seeds in and realized I had already messed up...

Something about growth or rebirth. Starting over. I need to make a playlist.

On Our First Show

"No more screamo bands, please!" Joey joked as he was setting up the equipment for the show. "The first three were fine, but now there's like ten on the bill!"

I need to get an eyebrow piercing before I leave, I think to myself. This was my bands first show, possibly our last. Angelina is off to France and then Cape Cod for the summer, then on to London for school. I'm off to New Paltz in August, and Talia, the very first person I've ever felt was a real best friend, was staying behind in the city.

"One rule you guys," Joey started to speak again. "Never let this microphone point at this speaker."

At the very final point in the night I would accidentally break that one rule. 

I wasn't nervous, not yet anyway. Recently my life has been burning so quick out of me it's hard for the nerves to catch up. I was mostly worried that no one would like us, not that we made bad music or anything, just that I wasn't sure if it would be their type of music. Our friends seemed excited, which i guess was the only thing that really mattered.

On Music

As a chronic music listener, I've come up with a system of sorts when it comes to "filing" and organizing what I like. Anything I find boring is immediately thrown out of the picture. I used to force myself to get through a whole song or album, even if it wasn't pleasing to me, just to give it a chance. Eventually I figured, if it doesn't please me now then it most likely never will. And I skip over it. I suppose that same mentality can apply to other life situations. Why must we force ourselves to pursue routes which bring no joy? Why must we try things we have no interest in, just to feel the satisfaction of saying we completed it? What small chance of short lived satisfaction is worth time being uncomfortable and strained?

All my music must be organized into playlists with songs and artists of a similar type. That way, if I'm feeling a certain way I know where I can find songs to match, elevate, or even dampen my mood. Sometimes if I listen to the wrong song for the state I'm in it gets really uncomfortable and everything feels so jumbled up - it's better to stick to what's familiar.

New Bucket List

 1. Study abroad, right now I'm thinking Italy. Spain or Ireland would also be nice.

2. Make a painting that really means something. Talia suggested a "Picasso-esque portrait of lesbians" but I don't care too much for Picasso.

3. Write some songs for myself so I can record and release a tape. My biggest influence so far is Liz Phair's Girly Sound Tapes, but I'm sure I'll find some more inspiration in other places.

4. Write like my life depends on it, until I come up with enough for a whole book about nothing.

5. Think of no one but myself.

6. Have a cup of tea, to make my head stop spinning.

On Me as an Artist

I never really considered myself as an "artist" until pretty recently. Until then I was just someone who did art. yes, I have other creative hobbies such as writing, playing guitar. But they were never anything more than that, and I would've never considered them to be in the realm of art. I'm not sure why the switch happened. Everything basically started changing once I read Joan Didion and picked up a journal for my English class. My reinterest in reading peaked again during my senior year while I was taking AP Lit. My writing interest peaked during that summer when I started Seether. Visual art was always harder to come by. The past 4 years I had been making art out of necessity, in order to complete assignments and get a grade. The pieces I made were meaningless beyond the surface level purpose of being for class. But I guess all that really started to change once I introduced myself to Patti Smith.

I mean, she was everything. Artist, writer, musician, fashionable in the way I like, spiritual, everything I strove to be. That on top of the fact that the new art class I was taking helped give me a new perspective on the art I could be making. I began to see art through an intellectual realm, through an emotional one as well. Art was something you could put your whole self into, and others could put all of themselves into and the whole world could feel as one.

I wanted art to be me. I felt an insatiable urge to make things and share them with everyone. I started making videos, montages really. I carried around my little camera with me, anxious to capture everything.

A Walk in the Park

I ditched my classes on Friday to go to the Met. I saw paintings of the Virgin Mary and thought about how she gave birth to Jesus. And what had I been doing?

Overwhelmed and upset, I took a walk in the part where I stumbled upon a man with 6 dogs of the same breed. I asked to take a photo, and the man said yes. I went on walking and didn't think about anything at all.

But I was so sad. You can never seem to escape that feeling until you do, and then you feel stupid for ever feeling it at all. I felt like crying and crying and I would've liked to scream because I felt lost and like my life had no direction and nothing was ever going my way. And I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing and I don't know what I want and I just want someone to answer me. I want someone to have an answer and it didn't feel like even God had an answer. Or maybe I just don't know what I'm asking. 

Wasted Affairs - Mind's Eye

Mia told me about this song.

"When my talking stage didn't work out and I was sad I listened to this," she said. "Sorry if you think it' so stupid and dumb."

I listened to the song, and it wasn't stupid or dumb at all. 

Talia and I have been really into Eve Babitz. Of course, she read LA Woman before me because she gets to everything cool before me, and I only just finished it on Saturday. It's still nice to go through this together. Joan Didon is another strong favorite. We're both supposed to be reading A Book of Common Prayer right now but I'm not sure if she is, since she already read it before me (because she gets to everything cool before me). Eve understands being a girl and LA while Joan Didion understands New York and the chaos of life, despite being from California herself. Virginia Woolf seems to understand all the little bits in between.

It's January and we've just gotten our first snow that stuck, only it didn't stay long enough to be remembered. I always liked January winters better than December ones. December winters feel like the end of the world while January feels like the beginning of a new one. In December I tend to focus on my past and dreadful present, while in January all I can think about is my future. But soon enough Spring will come, and I will forget that there was ever snow, despite it being piled on the ground for weeks.